The U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol turned its focus Tuesday to former President Donald Trump’s direct involvement in a scheme to pressure state and local officials to overturn his defeat in Georgia.
During the fourth of the panel’s hearings, investigators heard testimony from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a Fulton County election worker whose family was personally targeted by Trump’s lies of election fraud.
Here are key takeaways:
‘Contingent electors.’ The committee played video from Ronna Romney McDaniel, who chairs the Republican National Committee, who said under oath that Trump personally called her to further his scheme to put forward phony GOP electors in Georgia and other states.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
McDaniel said Trump put John Eastman, the conservative lawyer, on the phone to “talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.”
The 14 false GOP electors in Georgia are now under scrutiny from federal and local prosecutors investigating whether they violated the law.
‘Lost my name.’ The accounts from Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, underscored how otherwise anonymous election staffers faced unrelenting harassment after Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani and their supporters ensnared them in a phony conspiracy theory.
Moss said she hardly leaves her house and is afraid to use her name in public. Her voice straining with emotion, Moss also said Trump supporters tried to break into her grandmother’s house and conduct a “citizen’s arrest.”
And Freeman said she had to flee her home for months after the FBI encouraged her to go into hiding.
“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation,” Freeman said. “I’ve lost my sense of security all because a group of people starting with No. 45 and his ally, Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”
‘Useful idiots.’ Robert Sinners is a former low-level Trump aide who helped orchestrate the Republican effort to cast sham Electoral College votes at the state Capitol in December 2020.
Investigators obtained emails showing that Sinners directed the electors to operate in “complete secrecy” — and to mislead Georgia State Patrol officers questioning them about the visit.
In video testimony played at Tuesday’s hearing, Sinners said he now regrets his role in the scheme.
“We were just kind of useful idiots or rubes at that point,” said Sinners, now a staffer in the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
When he later learned that several top Trump campaign officials refused to help the fake elector plot, Sinners said he was “angry because I think no one really cared if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy.”
‘POTUS stuff.’ Mark Meadows, then Trump’s top aide, wanted to send a bounty of “POTUS stuff” to the Georgia election investigators.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff said the panel obtained texts that show Meadows wanted to send, in the words of an aide, “coins, actual autographed MAGA hats” and other swag to the state investigators. White House staff stepped in to “make sure that didn’t happen,” Schiff added.
Meadows made an unannounced visit in December 2020 to observe Georgia’s audit of absentee ballot envelope signatures. He also took part in Trump’s January 2021 call to Raffensperger that urged him to overturn the election results.
‘I lost it.’ Sterling emerged as a lead debunker of Trump’s election fraud lies with regular press sessions after the November 2020 election picking apart the latest conspiracy theory.
But his testimony addressed the emotional moment when he demanded that Trump and his allies tone down the rhetoric that led to violent threats against election workers.
He recalled what happened when he heard a contractor was receiving death threats posted by supporters of the dangerous QAnon ideology. He pulled up Twitter, saw the young staffer’s name next to a twisting noose and “lost it.”
“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Sterling, who described how his face turned red. He consulted with Raffensperger’s top aide, Jordan Fuchs, who got his approval to hold a press conference condemning Trump and his supporters for the dangerous rhetoric.
“I lost my temper. But it seemed necessary at the time because it was just getting worse,” Sterling said. “I could not tell you why that particular one was the one that put me over the edge, but it did.”
‘A ginger mint.’ The pro-Trump conspiracy theories falsely held that Moss lied about a water main break at State Farm Arena to kick out poll watchers and sneak in extra ballots in suitcases. Sterling debunked the lies during his testimony.
Giuliani falsely claimed during a legislative hearing in Georgia that Moss and her mother were passing a “USB drive” full of votes while tallying the ballots.
Schiff asked Moss what her mother actually passed her.
“A ginger mint,” Moss replied.
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